


Distracted

by nightsstarr



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, annette being a mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:00:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24343888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightsstarr/pseuds/nightsstarr
Summary: Celine Dominic has become increasingly concerned about the well-being of her daughter after several minor incidents have piled up over the past few days. Tonight's cookies burnt to a crisp on the cookie tray are just the latest victims in her slew of rampant clumsiness. What on earth could be distracting her daughter so thoroughly?
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 10
Kudos: 48
Collections: Those Who Drabble in the Dark





	Distracted

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for the prompt from the Felannie Discord, this week was hug. Hope you all like it!

Celine Dominic rolled over in her bed, the smell of something burning stinging at her nose. At first, she thought she was dreaming of her time as a girl around a fire on the west coast of Faerghus, but the smell roused her from sleep slowly. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, alarmed. 

The house certainly did not  _ appear  _ to be on fire, which meant she had at least a few more seconds to wake fully. 

“Gustave?” she called, her voice thick with sleep. She shook her husband by the shoulder. “Do you smell that?”

“Baking,” he mumbled into the pillow, fighting to hold onto the last vestiges of sleep.

“What?” Celine demanded, pushing her hair behind her ear to try to hear him better. 

“Annette was… baking…”

Celine groaned sleepily. “What if it’s a fire, Gustave? Or a thief?”

“Annette,” he mumbled again before burying his face even further into his pillow.

She sighed. She’d have to do this herself. “Fine, then, I’ll go make sure it’s her. Hopefully I don’t get accosted by thieves in the kitchen.”

Gustave only made incoherent, half-asleep noises into his pillow as Celine wrapped her robe around her waist and slid slippers onto her bare feet. 

She rolled her eyes at her husband, but smiled anyway. It had only been six months since the war ended and Annette had returned to Castle Dominic with her father in tow, and it all felt so new and fragile. 

Celine was a petite woman. It was her hope that her daughter would grow to be taller than her, at least by a few inches, but once she reached five feet, she simply stopped growing. Her robe dragged on the stairs as she descended them, and the flame from her candle didn’t reach as far as it did in her husband’s long arms. 

Chipper humming reached her ears as she approached the kitchen, and when she set her candle down on the counter it amplified the light of one already lit, dwindling and dripping wax over its handle. 

Annette didn’t seem to notice as she hummed, rolling dough out with a rolling pin. A cookie sheet with burnt circles of dough lay on the opposite counter, still cooling.

“Annette?” Celine asked gently, but her intrusion still startled her daughter, who yelped and swung at her mother with a rolling pin. 

Celine backed away with her palms spread out, frowning. It startled her to see Annette like this, high-strung and tense from her time in the war. 

“Oh! Sorry, Mom! What brings you down here? It’s late.” Annette returned to her dough and sprinkled more flour over it and returned to rolling it out. 

“Well, I  _ was _ asleep, but then I thought I smelled the house on fire and had to come investigate.”

Alarmed, Annette fixed her blue eyes on hers. “The house burning? I haven’t smelled anything, just my--” She glanced over at her tray of cookies, which were more like pucks of charred dough, and she frowned. “Oh. Sorry, Mom.”

“What are you doing baking at one in the morning, dear?”

“Well, it wasn’t one in the morning when I  _ started, _ Mom.”

Celine glanced over to the garbage, and she found dozens of similarly charred attempts at cookies in the pail. “How many batches have you made?”

Annette’s face turned red. “I don’t--I don’t know! I guess this is the third? I keep forgetting to get them out of the oven, but this time I’m not going to leave the kitchen until they’re done, I swear.”

Earlier today, Annette had twisted her ankle dismounting her horse, and yesterday she forgot to add cheese to her favorite cheese sauce, leaving just flour, milk, and spices. And she’d tried to serve it to her father that way. The day before that, she’d poked herself in the thumb with a needle  _ four times _ before Celine finally dismissed her.

Celine reached over the counter to press the back of her hand against Annette’s forehead, frowning. 

“What’s wrong, Mom?” Annette asked, pausing in her work. 

“Are you sick, dear? You’ve hardly been getting through each day lately. I know you’re prone to the occasional accident, but this is getting ridiculous.”

“I’m fine!” Annette insisted, and she pushed away Celine’s hand. “I guess I’ve been a little, um, distracted.”

“By  _ what?” _ Celine demanded. 

Her teaching job at the School of Sorcery had kept her occupied in the months since the war, but they were in the middle of winter recess now and there was no reason for her to be thinking about her work. 

“It’s--well, it’s nothing. Sort of.”

Celine said nothing, but she started attempting to clean some of the mess Annette had made in her valiant efforts. There was flour all over the floor, for starters, so she fetched the broom and started trying to sweep some of it up. 

“I heard--I heard Felix talking, last time he was here. When I didn’t get to see him much, because he was busy helping with His Majesty and the semester was finishing at the School at the same time? I heard him talking to Mercedes at the castle and he sort of implied to her that he might be thinking about proposing to me.”

The broom almost slipped through Celine’s fingers as her grip slackened in shock. “Annette!” she gasped as she adjusted it in her hand. “It’s not becoming to eavesdrop!”

“I couldn’t help it! It’s not like I thought they were talking about something secret, I just heard my name before I entered the room, that’s all.”

Even when she was a child, Annette was one to press her curious ear to a door in order to hear what was going on on the other side. 

“I just… I thought maybe he was humoring me, but the other day in his letter he said he had something important he wanted to speak to me about, and he’ll be arriving at Castle Blaiddyd tomorrow for some meeting about lending resources to House Galatea or something. So I’m a little nervous! And distracted!”

“Have you thought about what you’d say?” Celine asked, trying to keep her voice neutral. She didn’t know much about Annette’s courtship with the Duke Fraldarius. They started courting shortly after the war ended, but after Annette began teaching at the School of Sorcery. Felix was a nice boy, not very talkative, but polite when he did speak. He seemed happy enough to let Annette speak for the both of them. He got nervous around Celine, which she took to be respectful. He never had much to say to Gustave.

“Well, I think… You don’t think it would be foolish for me to accept, do you?  _ If _ he proposes. Which he might not. We haven’t been courting for so long, but we spent so much time together when we were fighting, I feel like I know him so well--”

Annette didn’t let go of the rolling pin when Celine put her hand on her shoulder and wrapped her arms around her neck and stroked her hair soothingly. Her har orange tresses smelled like the inside of an oven. “I don’t think it’s foolish at all. I’m glad that you’re finally happy, my brave daughter.”

She sighed and rested her cheek on her mother’s shoulder. “Thanks. This is all a big  _ if. _ I could be getting ahead of myself.”

“Well, why don’t you give me that, anyway,” Celine said as she plucked the rolling pin out of Annette’s hand, “and head up to bed. If the Duke is coming by tomorrow, you’ll want to be well-rested to avoid bags under your eyes.”

“Mom,” Annette huffed, and she pressed her floury fingers to her cheeks beneath her eyes. “I  _ don’t _ have eyebags.”

“Yes, and let’s keep it that way. What are you baking, shortbread?”

She nodded, her orange hair falling over her shoulder as she reluctantly stepped away from the counter. “Yeah, Felix doesn’t mind them because they’re not so sweet. I was going to make cinnamon, but I dropped it and it went  _ everywhere--” _

Celine gasped and waved the rolling pin in Annette’s direction. She was out of reach, but she flinched anyway. “Annette! Cinnamon is expensive!”

“Sorry! Sorry! I’ll replace it, I swear!”

“Just go to bed, Annette. I’ll finish these and put them in the jar when I’m done. And do try to get a hold of yourself, darling.”

“I’ll try, Mom. Thanks.” Annette pressed a quick kiss to her cheek before flouncing up the stairs, and Annette was already out of view when Celine heard her foot slip on one of the stairs, followed by a loud thunk. “I’m fine, I’m fine!” she shouted down the stairs and began ascending them again.

Celine sighed as she even out the flattened dough and reached for a cookie cutter. The poor Duke must not know what he was getting himself into.


End file.
